I have queried with the Department for Work and Pensions the fact that on my National Insurance records online there is no reference to my Home Responsibilities Protection being taken into consideration for the years I was on maternity leave.
The DWP keeps trying to tell me that these were taken into account when calculating my state pension but I am disputing this because the records show that I had ‘no full years from 1979 to 1996’ when I qualified for HRP.
My query is if my NI records still show ‘no full years’ how can my pension be correct?
I have queried this many times over the past three years but do not feel this is being treated seriously. Could you please help.
Steve Webb replies: You have encountered one of the most maddening features of a system designed to protect the pension rights of parents who stay at home to raise children – previously known as ‘Home Responsibilities Protection’ or HRP.
As you have found, you can be in a situation where you have been awarded HRP, and where it is included in your state pension calculation, but you cannot see it.
This is not just a minor technicality.
The Government has previously admitted that there are probably tens of thousands of parents who should have been awarded HRP and have missed out, and has so far paid out over £100million in state pension arrears where this probably has subsequently been corrected.
But it is very hard to work out if you are one of those people if you cannot even see your HRP when it has been awarded.
I will explain what is going on by running through a series of questions.
What is Home Responsibilities Protection?
Introduced in 1978/79, HRP is a way of protecting the pension record of parents – mostly mothers – who were not able to make National Insurance Contributions because they were looking after a child.
Who qualified for HRP?
When HRP was introduced, you could get it for any complete financial year in which you were receiving child benefit for a child who was under 16 for the full year.
From 2010/11 the upper age limit dropped from 16 to 12. But you could not get HRP for any year in which you were paying, or were eligible to pay, the reduced ‘married woman’s stamp’ rate of NI contributions.
How did HRP work?
For a woman who reached pension age before 2010, you needed 39 years of NI contributions to qualify for a full basic state pension.
However, each year of HRP when you were at home with a child knocks one year off your target for a full pension.
So, for example, if you had nine years of HRP, your target for a full pension would fall from 39 years to 30 years.
Is an HRP year a full qualifying year towards your pension?
No. It takes a bit of working out, but a full qualifying year is better than an HRP year.
To illustrate this, let me give a simple example.
Suppose you have 20 years of paid NI contributions and nine years of HRP.
As explained above, the HRP years reduce your target from 39 to 30 for a full pension. And if you have 20 years of paid contributions, this gives you an NI record of 20/30 or 67 per cent.
Suppose instead that those HRP years had actually been years of paid NI contributions. In this case your target for a full pension would remain at 39 years.
But your record would be 29 full years out of 39, or 75 per cent (rounded up).
As you can see, treating those nine years as full qualifying years gives you a record of 75 per cent, but treating them as ‘time off’ gives you only a record of 67 per cent.
So why isn’t HRP showing on your record?
We have established that a year which is a full qualifying year (through paid work, for example) acts in a different way to an HRP year.
For this reason, your years from 1979 to 1996 do *not* show as full qualifying years, even though they are HRP years.
Couldn’t the Government find some other way to show your HRP?
Yes. Whilst it might be confusing if they were to show these years as full years (when they are not), there’s nothing to stop HMRC from putting a sentence at the end of your NI record saying which years you have HRP.
There is a precedent for this in that they already add a sentence to describe your contributions pre 1975.
Before this date, the system was different and you simply have a summary of your total number of qualifying years. The same could be done for HRP.
Can anyone see their HRP online?
Yes. In April 2010, the rules around HRP changed. For those retiring after this point, all pre 2010 HRP years were converted into full qualifying years and count exactly the same as if you had been in paid work and paying NICs.
The system is now known as NI credits rather than HRP. Women who reached pension age from April 2010 onwards will see these years as full qualifying years on their record.
What should you do if you’re not sure if you have HRP or not?
If you reached pension age before 6 April 2010, and therefore HRP is not showing on your online record, you could try contacting the Pension Service.
If you think it is missing, you can apply for HRP either online or via putting a form in the post: Apply for Home Responsibilities Protection.
Can you work out yourself if HRP is included on your record?
You can also do a simple check to see if your own calculation has included HRP.
You will know from your online record how many years of paid NI contributions are showing. If you can’t access your NI record online you can request a printed National Insurance statement is posted to you
If you divide this number into the full 39 year target, this will give you a percentage contribution record if there was no HRP on your record – see the way I did the example sum above.
Once you have your own percentage figure, you can apply it to the full *basic* pension, which is currently £184.90 per week.
That will tell you your state pension entitlement based on your own NI record.
If you are currently getting a lot more than this – and more than the standard 60 per cent married woman’s rate as well – then this must mean HRP was included in your calculation.
What about your situation?
Having looked at your NI record and how much state pension you have told me you are getting, I can confirm that you are benefiting from HRP, even though those years are not showing on your National Insurance record.
What does the Government say?
I asked HMRC for a comment and it said: ‘We want it to be simple and straightforward for people to find out what years count as qualifying years for their state pension.
‘We’re therefore looking at how we can provide more information about people’s Home Responsibilities Protection and National Insurance records in their Personal Tax Accounts.’
It would certainly be very welcome if this information became available via Personal Tax Accounts.
It would be better still if it was displayed in the same place as the current web page to check your National Insurance record.
But as long as it was available *somewhere* this would reduce the need to phone up to find out or waste time applying for HRP that may already have been awarded.
SIPPS: INVEST TO BUILD YOUR PENSION
Affiliate links: If you take out a product This is Money may earn a commission. These deals are chosen by our editorial team, as we think they are worth highlighting. This does not affect our editorial independence.